My name is Fernando. I'm argentinian, and I'm 40 years old. And Firefox is about to be wiped out. Yes, you read correctly. And this post is a last ditch attempt to stop that.
No, this post is not going to be normal. And no, this post is not going to be easygoing, either.
The next thing you need to know about me, is that I'm neither a kid, nor a fool. And no, I'm not a programmer. Nor am I looking for a job. No, I do not want money. And no, I'm not seeking for 15 minutes of fame.
Finally, no,I do not enjoy talking about myself either. I must, this time, least of all anyone here tries to invalidate the tremendously solid and urgent points about to be made in an unfair manner. We simply do not have the time.
Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance. Period.
HOLD IT: The real message
HOLD IT:Firefox's past
"Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance. Period."
How do I know? Simple. 1) A brutal chunk of the market out there uses IE. 2) People does not change unless there is some good reason for it. 3) There is no good reason for it.
Question: How did Firefox ever even managed to exist? Because when FF started, a couple of good reasons existed. 1) To be open source. 2) To be extensible. 3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most notably, standards and tabbeb browsing.
Now let me dissect that: 1) To be open source. That is not a *technical* reason. It is a social one. For an app to be open source does not mean that has better functionality, better algorithms, better GUI, or anything like it. It simply means that intelligent people would contribute to it for free. For instance, showing out of nowhere and writing weird (but valuable) posts before it is too late. Like this one. Instead of writing them to Microsoft.
2) To be extensible. This is true advantage. Honest to god one. However, there is a point to be made. Some extensions should obviously (by now) be included in the main code. And they are not getting there. So we keep having to add extensions for features that should NOT be extensions. Heaps and more heaps of extensions.
Oh, yeah, yeah, donīt bother, I can hear you already: "That is a feature, not a bug. You can make firefox as big or small as you want". And... "Not everyone would agree with which features should be incorporated and which should not."
Em...no, sorry. There might be some not-so-clear cases. Sure. But there are some clear ones. And there is not even mention of including them, as far as I can see today.
We can discuss extension by extension, or feature by feature. I can make some strong cases for some of them. But I will not here, now. My point here is that not even the *idea* seems to be considered at this time. Hughe mistake.
3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most notably, standards and tabbeb browsing. Let's be clear about this one. You *could* have tabbed browsing before. But most people did not even know it, So let's count it as a true, valid point. Today, however, ALL browsers are tabbed. This is no "exciting feature" anymore. And what do we see when we go to see FF's 2.0 roadmap? Yes, you guessed: tabbed browsing improvemnts. let me remind you, we are not talking about FF 1.5, no. We are not talking about a typical "bug fixing in next release" sort of thing, no. We are talking about FF 2.0. But wait, it gets worse! What do we get when we go to see FF's 3.0 roadmap???? Tabbed browsing improvements. The bleeding thing does not even exist yet, and is more than a year away! And we are still talking tabbed browsing???????????????? Utterly unacceptable.
As for standards, they are a truly good feature. No questions about it. However, two observations: 1) People who care about standards are not your regular folk. They are not the bulk of the poeople out there. Most people who care about standards, are geeks, or at least sufficiently tech-savvy. Most of those adopted FF already. But do not expect market share to increase from that. 2) In fact, that bunch of standards aware early adopters, might even diminish. Why so? Because web standards *per se*, altough good, were not an end in themselves, but a mean. And a mean for what? For something else. Perhaps it can best expessed as "interoperability", or "machine processability". A second tier. Apps that take advantage from standards. And why diminish? Because there is a problem with that: their appearance rate. Their coming out is taking ages. And I'm talking years. Full years. Hence, some get bored.
HOLD IT: Firefox's present
FF is about to sink. Why? Because instead of "to boldly go...", it stalled. And mind you, the word "stalled" might be percieved as "to at least mantain it's market share". Not to gain (which it should), but at least, not to loose. But that is not even the case.
IE7 and Vista are coming. Microsoft, as usual, is doing as little as it can but just enough to screw all competitors. 1) Example 1: for standards people, iron out the worst, untenable bugs. A crap solution, obviously. But enough to mud the waters, and to take wawy selling points in *bulk people's perception*. A dirty 80/20 move. But it works. 2) Example 2: tabbed browsing, Formerly a complete FF comparative asset, now evened up. Gone. And (again in bulk people's perception) it works.
Is that it? Bad, terribly bad as it is, is that it? No, hell, no. There is more. Potentially, *way* more. But I'll discuss it later on.
So are there any killer features in FF 2.0? No. The closest thing would be rss support.New feature, true. True funcionality (assuming it is done correctly). True. Killer feature? Er...no. Very useful, yes. But *comparatively* speaking, no advantage. Why not? Because by now, all other browsers do it as well. So no. At most, it is a tie. And could it get even worst? Yes, it could. How come? "Embrace, extend, extinguish" comes to mind. It so happens that Microsft saw an ooportunity this time. Not just to apply an 80/20 rule, declare the situation a tie, and screw everyone else by sheer weight (market share). No, it is potentially worst. It has to do with a couple of things roughly called list extensions. Microsoft saw the obvious: that no matter that rss took full years to get to prime time, the bleeding thing is, programatically peaking, a tremendously basic thing, i.e, "to pull constantly updated content from a url in a half-decent efficient manner". Take the hype out, and the thing is just "a list". Yes, one of the most simple data structures you could possibly get. And Microsft saw the obvious: a list is a very simple dat structure, and heaps of things are lists, so you can dazzle people by programming very little: a lists manipulator. The end user will not just have rss, but also "amazon wishlists", aand blah blah blah. A ton of other instances of "a list". Given that IE might be ready to handle any of such lists from within the browser, and be "integrated" with the OS...then yes, it can get worse. A coparative *dis*-advantage, unless the lists problem is considered.
So no killer feature. At best a tie.
Can it get even worst? Oh, yes. Perhaps very. Via something called winFS. Basically speaking, the OS becomes a sort of (faked, apparently) database. Which means that all manners of interoperability between different data formats, from different sources, becomes possible, but furthermore, perhaps even simple. So beware of letting this "lists extensions" things pass by. "Forget OPML" *has* been heard already, mind you all, for instance.
HOLD IT: Firefox's future
Firefox kickstarted more or less decently (market-share wise) because IE was left to the dogs for years. It is no longer the case. And there are few low-hanging apples left.
People poured into it because of it being open source, extensible, and innovative (killer features). It is still open, or this message would be in Microsft's forum. It is still extensible, though the extensions situation is A MESS. There are NO killer features in the horizon, not even one full year away, by which time IE7 and Vista will be out already.
Furthermore, due to PR and people's perception, if FF is even *suspected* of being stalled, it is history. It has GOT to innovate. Or perish.
Bottom line: FF 2.0 and 3.0 roadmaps have to go. Yes, today. Yes, the whole thing. And we need killer features inmediately. And yes, some have to make it to 2.0. No, not everything is conveniently kickable to 3.0. Killer features HAVE to make it BEFORE IE7 ships. 3.0 is way too late.
Failure to do that = "eternal 10%". Or death.
HOLD IT: The solution
We have a big problem and we don't have time. However, I know a way out.
A fast way out, and given that most action happen in extensions these days, is to include some extension into the core code. While this is not a completely honest to god "FF development", it allows at least to be able to say: "FF now has this feature/s" as selling point at release time. Furthermore, if the extension's code wasn't all too clean, if some side-features were incomplete or lacking, if the UI wasn't to polished...then to work on it and to icorporate a more polished end result, is not quite dishonest either.
<disclaimer> I have much more to say in this post, but I'll dive into a particular candidate extension for this for a few paragraphs. You include this extension into the core, then the FF 2.0 critical relesase previous to IE7 and Vista is saved. </disclaimer>
Extension to be included: Scrapbook
Why so? Beacuse then you can write sentences like this:
----"Remember your old "Save As..." functionality? Well, forget it. Firefox got a massive update and now sports a database-like, taggable, full-text searchable store for web captured content. You can: 1) Save just a page's address (a bookmark) 2) Save just snippets (selected parts of a page, both including all the styles, or none, plus pictures, plus anything else) 3) Save a whole page 4) Save a
...
On 2006-03-01, teoriadetodo <teoriadet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> to unify both firefox bars: the address > bar, and the search bar.
A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.
j wrote: > On 2006-03-01, teoriadetodo <teoriadet...@gmail.com> wrote: >> to unify both firefox bars: the address >> bar, and the search bar.
> A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the > address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard > user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred > search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.
> A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the > address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard > user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred > search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.
> Firefox should do this too.
Firefox automatically Googles something you put in the location bar if it doesn't seem to be a domain (or maybe even if it is a domain but doesn't resolve).
You can also use the keyword bookmarks it comes with (in the Quick Searches folder), 'google', 'dict' for Dictionary.com, 'quote' for Google stocks, 'wp' for Wikipedia and 'slang' for Urban Dictionary. And you can create others if you want to.
(Does it use Answers.com now instead of Dictionary.com for the bookmark? It's replaced the search plugin...) -- Matt Nordhoff
j wrote: > On 2006-03-01, teoriadetodo <teoriadet...@gmail.com> wrote: >> to unify both firefox bars: the address >> bar, and the search bar.
> A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the > address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard > user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred > search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.
> My name is Fernando. I'm argentinian, and I'm 40 years old. > And Firefox is about to be wiped out. > Yes, you read correctly. > And this post is a last ditch attempt to stop that.
> No, this post is not going to be normal. > And no, this post is not going to be easygoing, either.
> The next thing you need to know about me, is that I'm neither a kid, nor a > fool. > And no, I'm not a programmer. > Nor am I looking for a job. > No, I do not want money. > And no, I'm not seeking for 15 minutes of fame.
> Finally, no,I do not enjoy talking about myself either. I must, this time, > least of all anyone here tries to invalidate the tremendously solid and > urgent points about to be made in an unfair manner. > We simply do not have the time.
> Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance. > Period.
> HOLD IT: The real message
> HOLD IT:Firefox's past
> "Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance. > Period."
> How do I know? > Simple. > 1) A brutal chunk of the market out there uses IE. > 2) People does not change unless there is some good reason for it. > 3) There is no good reason for it.
> Question: How did Firefox ever even managed to exist? > Because when FF started, a couple of good reasons existed. > 1) To be open source. > 2) To be extensible. > 3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most > notably, standards and tabbeb browsing.
> Now let me dissect that: > 1) To be open source. > That is not a *technical* reason. It is a social one. > For an app to be open source does not mean that has better functionality, > better algorithms, better GUI, or anything like it. > It simply means that intelligent people would contribute to it for free. > For instance, showing out of nowhere and writing weird (but valuable) > posts before it is too late. > Like this one. > Instead of writing them to Microsoft.
> 2) To be extensible. > This is true advantage. Honest to god one. > However, there is a point to be made. > Some extensions should obviously (by now) be included in the main code. > And they are not getting there. > So we keep having to add extensions for features that should NOT be > extensions. Heaps and more heaps of extensions.
> Oh, yeah, yeah, donīt bother, I can hear you already: > "That is a feature, not a bug. You can make firefox as big or small as you > want". > And... > "Not everyone would agree with which features should be incorporated and > which should not."
> Em...no, sorry. > There might be some not-so-clear cases. Sure. > But there are some clear ones. And there is not even mention of including > them, as far as I can see today.
> We can discuss extension by extension, or feature by feature. I can make > some strong cases for some of them. But I will not here, now. > My point here is that not even the *idea* seems to be considered at this > time. Hughe mistake.
> 3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most > notably, standards and tabbeb browsing. > Let's be clear about this one. > You *could* have tabbed browsing before. But most people did not even know > it, So let's count it as a true, valid point. > Today, however, ALL browsers are tabbed. This is no "exciting feature" > anymore. > And what do we see when we go to see FF's 2.0 roadmap? > Yes, you guessed: tabbed browsing improvemnts. > let me remind you, we are not talking about FF 1.5, no. We are not talking > about a typical "bug fixing in next release" sort of thing, no. > We are talking about FF 2.0. > But wait, it gets worse! > What do we get when we go to see FF's 3.0 roadmap???? > Tabbed browsing improvements. > The bleeding thing does not even exist yet, and is more than a year away! > And we are still talking tabbed browsing???????????????? > Utterly unacceptable.
> As for standards, they are a truly good feature. No questions about it. > However, two observations: > 1) People who care about standards are not your regular folk. They are not > the bulk of the poeople out there. Most people who care about standards, are > geeks, or at least sufficiently tech-savvy. Most of those adopted FF > already. But do not expect market share to increase from that. > 2) In fact, that bunch of standards aware early adopters, might even > diminish. > Why so? Because web standards *per se*, altough good, were not an end in > themselves, but a mean. > And a mean for what? For something else. Perhaps it can best expessed as > "interoperability", or "machine processability". A second tier. Apps that > take advantage from standards. And why diminish? Because there is a problem > with that: their appearance rate. Their coming out is taking ages. And I'm > talking years. Full years. Hence, some get bored.
> HOLD IT: Firefox's present
> FF is about to sink. Why? Because instead of "to boldly go...", it > stalled. > And mind you, the word "stalled" might be percieved as "to at least > mantain it's market share". Not to gain (which it should), but at least, not > to loose. > But that is not even the case.
> IE7 and Vista are coming. > Microsoft, as usual, is doing as little as it can but just enough to screw > all competitors. > 1) Example 1: for standards people, iron out the worst, untenable bugs. A > crap solution, obviously. But enough to mud the waters, and to take wawy > selling points in *bulk people's perception*. A dirty 80/20 move. But it > works. > 2) Example 2: tabbed browsing, Formerly a complete FF comparative asset, > now evened up. Gone. And (again in bulk people's perception) it works.
> Is that it? Bad, terribly bad as it is, is that it? No, hell, no. There is > more. Potentially, *way* more. But I'll discuss it later on.
> So are there any killer features in FF 2.0? No. > The closest thing would be rss support.New feature, true. True > funcionality (assuming it is done correctly). True. Killer feature? Er...no. > Very useful, yes. But *comparatively* speaking, no advantage. > Why not? Because by now, all other browsers do it as well. > So no. At most, it is a tie. > And could it get even worst? Yes, it could. > How come? "Embrace, extend, extinguish" comes to mind. It so happens that > Microsft saw an ooportunity this time. Not just to apply an 80/20 rule, > declare the situation a tie, and screw everyone else by sheer weight (market > share). No, it is potentially worst. > It has to do with a couple of things roughly called list extensions. > Microsoft saw the obvious: that no matter that rss took full years to get to > prime time, the bleeding thing is, programatically peaking, a tremendously > basic thing, i.e, "to pull constantly updated content from a url in a > half-decent efficient manner". Take the hype out, and the thing is just "a > list". Yes, one of the most simple data structures you could possibly get. > And Microsft saw the obvious: a list is a very simple dat structure, and > heaps of things are lists, so you can dazzle people by programming very > little: a lists manipulator. The end user will not just have rss, but also > "amazon wishlists", aand blah blah blah. A ton of other instances of "a > list". > Given that IE might be ready to handle any of such lists from within the > browser, and be "integrated" with the OS...then yes, it can get worse. A > coparative *dis*-advantage, unless the lists problem is considered.
> So no killer feature. At best a tie.
> Can it get even worst? Oh, yes. Perhaps very. Via something called winFS. > Basically speaking, the OS becomes a sort of (faked, apparently) database. > Which means that all manners of interoperability between different data > formats, from different sources, becomes possible, but furthermore, perhaps > even simple. > So beware of letting this "lists extensions" things pass by. "Forget OPML" > *has* been heard already, mind you all, for instance.
> HOLD IT: Firefox's future
> Firefox kickstarted more or less decently (market-share wise) because IE > was left to the dogs for years. It is no longer the case. > And there are few low-hanging apples left.
> People poured into it because of it being open source, extensible, and > innovative (killer features). > It is still open, or this message would be in Microsft's forum. > It is still extensible, though the extensions situation is A MESS. > There are NO killer features in the horizon, not even one full year away, > by which time IE7 and Vista will be out already.
> Furthermore, due to PR and people's perception, if FF is even *suspected* > of being stalled, it is history. It has GOT to innovate. Or perish.
> Bottom line: FF 2.0 and 3.0 roadmaps have to go. Yes, today. Yes, the > whole thing. And we need killer features inmediately. > And yes, some have to make it to 2.0. No, not everything is conveniently > kickable to 3.0. Killer features HAVE to make it BEFORE IE7 ships. 3.0 is > way too late.
> Failure to do that = "eternal 10%". Or death.
> HOLD IT: The solution
> We have a big problem and we don't have time. > However, I know a way out.
> A fast way out, and given that most action happen in extensions these > days, is to include some extension into the core code. > While this is not a completely honest to god "FF development", it allows > at least to be able to say: "FF now has this feature/s" as selling point at > release time. > Furthermore, if the extension's code wasn't all too clean, if some > side-features were incomplete or lacking, if the UI wasn't to > polished...then to work on it and to icorporate a more polished end result, > is not quite dishonest either.
> <disclaimer> I have much more to say in this post, but I'll dive into a > particular candidate extension for this for a few paragraphs. You include > this extension into the core, then the FF 2.0 critical relesase previous > to IE7 and Vista is saved. </disclaimer>
